


It Wouldn't Be Love (If It Didn't Hurt Nobody)

by ShadowsLament



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, Spoilers for eps 1.13 and 2.1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 18:38:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12563704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: Archie called from the hospital's waiting room, but Jughead didn't answer, not the first time, or the sixth. So he went looking, and found Jug in a hotel bar on the outskirts of town.





	It Wouldn't Be Love (If It Didn't Hurt Nobody)

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from RITUAL's "Wouldn't Be Love," but it was their song "Hotel Bars" that got this fic going.

The room exhaled cigarette smoke. Thick enough to obscure the black leather booths lining the walls. To blur the candlelit faces Archie searched, looking for black hair, pale skin. An achingly familiar hat. Near the back, a narrow bar stretched straight across. A large urn stood in the center, dripping flowers: red roses and crimson tulips, dahlias darker than a ruby. Clotted around all the rest, a vermilion flower bloomed like an open wound on the end of a bright green stem. 

He’d driven five miles towards the outskirts of town before he’d lost the mixed scent of hand sanitizer and bleach. The cloying residue of incense in a long, silent hallway where absolutely no one could find God. Glaring at the flowers, he stopped breathing through his nose.

Three aisles of varying widths split the lounge to isolate groups from couples from loners. Archie picked one, shouldering past a waiter wearing a black jacket and black bandana closed over cropped hair. With his eyes on a kind of liquid drying in dark, irregular splatters across the rounded toe of the waiter’s shoes, Archie nearly tripped on the folded edge of a Persian rug the exact color of the stains on his--

"Arch?" Jughead rose from a leather armchair backed into a tight corner. Halfway around a coffee table covered in blue ballpoint pens separated from their chewed-up caps, scattered notebooks and labels carefully peeled off longneck amber bottles, Jug's welcoming glance lowered from Archie's face to the blood folded into the elbow of his jacket. Shifted over to the ruined shirt Archie still wore because the thin cotton was stuck to his skin. "What--"

Archie said, “You didn’t answer your phone,” and thought of his guitar and the string he’d wound too tight. The fucking awful sound it had made. “Why didn’t you answer? Everyone else, they just showed up, and that was fine, you know, but you were the one I--”

"I'm sorry." Jughead frowned. "Take a deep breath for me, okay?" Archie realized what Jug was doing after he’d tugged the jacket off Archie’s shoulders, yanking on the sleeves to turn them inside out before tossing it aside. Within seconds the warmth of Jug’s clean jean jacket clung to Archie’s biceps, settled against the back of his neck. "Rorschach couture isn't your go to, so what’s--"

“He shot him, Jug.” Archie shook his head, swiped at the hair that suddenly cut through his line of sight. "I couldn’t see his face, except for his eyes, because of the hood, but he was in Pop’s, and he had a gun, and he shot him, and--”

"Who, Archie?" Jug's fingers curled around Archie's wrist. "Who got--"

"Dad." Archie licked his lips and tasted metal. "My dad." He tried again, and sort of wondered why blood tasted like pennies, wet from sweat. “The hospital, his doctors, they wouldn’t let me stay.”

Jughead looked at him, and looked, and Archie felt laid open. 

“ _Don’t_ ,” he bit out, and yeah, he was staring at Jug’s mouth, at the mole he’d unknowingly added to his collection with blue ink. Fuck, but he really wanted to smear it. With his thumb, or with his tongue, it didn’t matter. “Do _not_ ask me what I need.”

_Because you know_ , Archie thought, his eyes darting up to Jughead’s. _I’m pretty sure you’ve always known_. 

The fingers on his wrist trembled. Slid down to slot between his. Held on. 

He would have followed Jughead anywhere, given the choice, but his best friend wasn’t asking, so Archie let himself be pulled along the same path he’d stumbled down minutes before. He managed to spare a quick glance over his shoulder at the stuff--most of it personal, private, always fiercely guarded--that Jug left behind without a second thought.

He noticed the bottles of beer, two of them, untouched, perched near the table’s edge, and maybe, before, he would have asked. Maybe, before, he would’ve been able to accept the answer.

Archie swallowed. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t have enough money for a room. They wouldn’t give us one even if I did,” Jug said, and shrugged. “So it’s going to have to be your truck.” He pulled up short in the lobby, next to a mixed-stone mantel and a riotous fire that didn’t come close to competing with the heat of his shoulder where it pressed tight against Archie’s. “You brought the truck, right? Tell me you didn’t--”

“It’s in the lot.” Four black suede sofas, coupled off and back to back. The mahogany concierge desk, lit by a reading lamp shaded in green glass, with bronze pulls. What had to be a mile of polished hard wood floor between where they stood and the door. If he touched Jughead now, like he wanted to--Archie squeezed Jug’s hand. “And it’s empty.”

Jughead grinned, the curve of those lips sharper than the switchblade Archie’d taken from the dashboard compartment and shoved in his back pocket. “Archie Andrews, that might go down as the sexiest thing you’ve said in the whole of your comparatively short life.”

“Jug.” Before his impatient heart beat filled his throat, made talking impossible, Archie said, “Please.”

“Right.” Jughead glanced at the peppermints wrapped in silver foil in a cut crystal bowl on the front desk. At the careful stack of suitcases on the floor near the elevator. “Why are we still in this fucking lobby?”

Archie’s brow rose. “You tell me.”

“If it’s all the same to you I’d rather just go,” Jughead said, and tugged. “Come on.”

Together, they cut through a knot of people divesting themselves of coats and binoculars, pencils tucked behind more than one ear, small steno pads shoved in at least three breast pockets. Swerved around a man with corduroy patches on the elbows of his sweater, too intent on the Red-headed Woodpecker in the book he held to notice their approach.

Flicking a glinting glance at Archie, Jughead nodded towards the glossy illustration. “Cousin of yours?”

The right response registered in Archie’s brain, only his mouth couldn’t maintain the slight smile he’d managed, not yet. “Yeah, three or four times removed.”

Outside, their breath caught the quiet night air and wavered, curled. When they were kids that condensation was dragon’s fire, it was a phoenix’s tail feather. It was whatever Jughead had been reading about at the time come to life. How many hours they’d spent on Archie’s front steps, Fred in the door, watching as--” _No_.”

Jughead went still beside him. “No?”

Archie blinked. The parking lot’s faded white lines and pitted gravel came into focus. His truck waited alone, at the edge of the surrounding woods. Only a few feet away, but they’d stopped walking. Again. “Why--”

“You said no.” Jughead’s grip on Archie’s hand loosened. “And it sounded like you meant it.” 

Why would he have--“I did?” Archie frowned. “I said that?”

On a sigh, Jughead said, “Look, Arch--”

“I am,” Archie said, a heat like desperation rising in his chest and cheeks. “I _am_ looking. And I’m telling you the word no is not on the table. Not from me.” 

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” Jughead said. “So if the words _not right now_ \--”

“You can just say it, you know.”

A furrow sliced down the center of Jug’s brow. “Say _it_ , Archie? What--”

“That you don’t want me like...that.”

“That?” Jughead repeated. 

Archie grimaced. “So it sounded lame--”

“You reduced the thought of us fucking to a single, boring syllable,” Jughead said, and, god, his eyes were as dark as the blood Archie’s hands had left on the steering wheel. “Lame doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“I didn’t mean...That’s not--” Archie closed his eyes. He inhaled. The night narrowed to hushed birdsong, to woodsmoke and pine and Jughead’s shampoo, his soap, deep and cool as a northern ocean. “Remember when we used to sit in front of my house on freezing days, how we’d breathe out to see what it would look like? And my dad would watch for a bit before...before--”

“He made us hot chocolate,” Jughead added softly, “and pancakes, and topped both with mountains of whipped cream.”

“Practically an entire can.” Archie tried not to choke on a laugh, or a sob. “And you would still ask, every time, if there was more.” He felt Jug’s thumb on his cheek and realized his lashes were damp, his skin wet. “He’d made it through surgery before they kicked me out.” Opening his eyes, Archie found Jughead there, closer than before. Closer than he’d been in weeks, months. “I didn’t lose him, Jug. I know that, I do, but...”

“The very real possibility scared the shit out of you,” Jughead said, “and you can’t shake it.”

A slow second lapsed before Archie quietly admitted, “I keep thinking I should be used to feelings that won’t let go. All those stupid decisions I made, like I could, I don’t know, just shrug off how badly I wanted you.” He wasn’t sure which of them moved, didn’t care: Jug’s hands settled on Archie’s hips, warm and certain. “All those nights you were in my bed, or on the floor beside me, and all I could see was your mouth, the smile I would’ve sworn you reserved for me. I’d look at your hands and think about how you’d touch--”

Jughead took the next word from Archie’s lips, gave his breath in return. 

Tightening the arm he’d wound around Jughead’s back, Archie ran his right hand up the long line of Jug’s spine. When his fingers found thick, soft strands of hair, he dug in. 

Jug stole glances. He would pore over pages and print so fine it defied all meaning to Archie’s mind. He devoured details, like his life depended on the weight of a spoon, the texture of a desk, the hum or howl that built in Archie’s throat when Jug used his teeth, his tongue to sooth the scrape. When Jughead echoed the sound, rougher, deeper, Archie understood why.

Even when he couldn’t sleep for thinking about it, staring up at the ceiling wondering what his best friend would taste like, kissing Jug was nothing like Archie had imagined. It was more: heat and hunger and unhesitating.

“We,” Jughead breathed, “should,” he said, pressing the word into the corner of Archie’s mouth, “take this,” tugging on Archie’s lower lip, lightly, lingering, “inside the truck.”

“Mm hmm,” Archie agreed, and with Jug’s shirt fisted in his hand, walked backwards. Mouth to mouth, because now that it was his, he wasn’t going to lose that connection.

Jughead moved with him, laughing, murmuring, “You’re going to fall.”

“Did that a long time ago.”

Pausing, pulling back, Jughead searched Archie’s face from scar to kiss-slick lips. “Yeah, well,” he said, finally, “you took me with you, only you didn’t notice. And, I’m not going to lie, it hurt pretty spectacularly. That day I caught you with--”

“I’m not doing that again, Jug,” Archie promised. “I won’t mess this up.”

“You will.” Jughead shook his head when Archie would have protested. His eyes tracked over Archie’s shoulder to the woods, picking through trees that stood bare, knotted near the heart, split by scars left by time, by bored hands holding knives, by poorly placed spiles. “I will, too, at some point,” he said. “Probably.”

“So we’ll fix it.”

Jug’s eyebrow arched. “Fight or fuck?”

“Something like that.” Archie grinned, and it stuck. “Or we could--”

“If you’re about to suggest we cry it out in each other’s arms, don’t,” Jughead said, smiling like he had that night at the pep rally, like happiness couldn’t last unless it was held close as a secret. “The sap we’re currently passing off as conversation is so thick it’s making those trees over there jealous.”

Archie glanced back at leaves like fire, and said, “They don’t look green to me.”

Jughead groaned. “That was terrible.” Reaching around Archie, he found the driver side door’s handle, tugged it open. Pinned Archie with a look that burned hotter, brighter, than any of the stars spreading out across the sky above them. “Get in the truck.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments (and kudos, of course) are always appreciated.


End file.
